It’s long been my belief that most indie devs who make games based on high death counts often forget that the fun part is not supposed to be the dying, but the surviving.

To which the team behind Minit said “hold my beer.”

Sometimes the pixel art thing is inspired. Sometimes it feels pretentious. Here, like the drunk roofer, it slightly leans towards the ladder. Get it? The ladder. Latter? I’ll move on.

Minit is a Zelda-like adventure game with the gimmick being that, no matter what you do, you die every sixty seconds and have to return to whatever your current starting base is. I actually didn’t know about this going into the game. I do my best to avoid any and all information on indies and begin playing as cold as possible. When I saw the name, I figured the key part of the name Minit was the MINI part. But no, it’s “Minit” as in “Minute.” In fact, “Minit” is the Malaysian word for “minute” and I’m jealous because it’s one letter shorter and thus 16.6% more efficient than English. At least for now. We’re slowly but surely getting to the point that English will be a series of grunts and obscene gestures.

It was actually comical because for the first few minutes of Minit, I didn’t notice the countdown timer in the corner of the screen. So when I died for the first time, I was quite miffed. There were a few crabs on the screen and an animation of grass or dust moving on the ground, so I was like, “huh, maybe an enemy burrowed into me without me having a chance to dodge. Well, that’s cheap as shit.” Then I started again, went the same direction trying to find what killed me, stood around, and died again. A parade of cuss words, each more cringey than the next, followed. Like the oblivious twit that I was, I went back one more time to the spot I died, cleared out the enemies, started getting really annoyed, and was ready to enter the Controller Shot Put event (my personal best is 11.87m). And then I noticed a timer counting down from 4 in the corner of the screen. “Huh, I wonder what that is?” Then it reached zero. And I died. Again.

“Oh. I get it. MINIT. Like MINUTE. That’s clever.”

By the way, sometimes I pull shit out of my ass for comic effect here at IGC. But all the stuff in the above paragraph, and I really hate to admit this, is 100% true. Well except the 11.87m (I was on steroids at the time so it wasn’t a legal attempt). Derp.

Maybe he’s not really dying. Maybe he just keeps throwing his back out because he’s using a sword that has more mass than he does.

Once I got the point of Minit, I found the game to be fine. I’m not the type to get caught up in speed running, which is the primary audience Minit was designed for and adopted by. For me, it would have to stand on its own merits as an exploration-based adventure game that takes place in sixty-second chunks. And it kind of does. Trying to sprint from point A to point B while working in a dash of exploring and investigating requires time management and a preset game-plan. In that sense, Minit sometimes feels more like how an actual adventure in such a situation would play out. Well, an adventure with someone who has a congenital heart defect.

Having said that, all the problems with Minit stem from the gimmick itself. In order to keep the game on point and streamlined, world design had to be kept to a simplistic minimum. Functionally, it works fine. Artistically, it’s kind of dull. Ultra-basic maps and enemies keep the tempo lower than you would expect. That’s kind of what surprises me the most. In a game based entirely around a ticking clock and speed, Minit rarely felt white-knuckle. Maybe towards the end of the game, but then again, I didn’t even realize I was at the end of the game until the ending played out. I was like “oh hey, I just cleared the first boss.” And then Minit was like “nope, that’s the only boss.” Well fuck me. I’ve how bowel movements that took me longer to work out.

Worth noting: I died a couple of times during the boss but came back with no consequence and the boss not reset to the beginning. I’m honestly not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s a thing.

Minit’s gimmick is clever and original, but it’s also such a major handicap. Not one aspect of the actual design besides the dying gimmick is memorable. The graphics are stark and stripped down. The enemy designs are clichéd and bland. Minit is a one trick pony. It’s a very cute pony. I’ll give it that. It’s certainly worth playing at least once. Finishing Minit opens up a second quest with a 40 second time limit and a few location changes. I barely made it into it because I was satisfied enough with my 90 minutes spent with Minit and had no desire to go forward. Which is sort of weird because there were tons of unanswered questions. There were tentacles scattered throughout the world, but I never got those. There was a dungeon with a large maze, but I never finished it. There were apparently speed shoes that you could buy, but I never found close to enough coins to buy them. Wait, did I accidentally speed run Minit? Fuck me, I’m better than I realized!

Mint was developed by like a bunch of people who I couldn’t find. Devolver Digital published it.Point of Sale: Steam, Xbox One, PS4

$9.99 was going to be the hero of the world.. and then I died in the making of this review.

Minit is Chick-Approved with the cuddly new Indie Gamer Chick Seal of Approval. Order your own Seal of Approval now. I mean, your OWN seal of approval. For your game review site. My approval of your game is not for sale. Well, at least not for cheap.